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Ex-head of Texas prisons set up Abu Ghraib

Ex-head of TDCJ set up Iraq jail`Checkered' career raises questions

KIM COBB, Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Published
5:30 am CDT, Sunday, May 16, 2004

A civilian charged with preparing Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison for U.S. military use headed the Texas prison system during one of its most controversial periods and later resigned as director of Utah prisons after an inmate died while shackled naked to a chair.

Lane McCotter, now director of business development for a private prison company, Management & Training Corp., says he never trained U.S. military personnel working in Iraq's prisons and turned over the management of Abu Ghraib to military officials before the United States began housing prisoners there.

But Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, is urging Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate how civilians such as McCotter were chosen to oversee the opening of prisons in Iraq -- noting that McCotter is an executive for a company operating a private prison in New Mexico that the Justice Department criticized last year for unsafe conditions and lack of medical care for inmates.

McCotter returned to the United States in early September after four months of work in Iraq, first evaluating and then preparing the country's prisons for reopening. The first documented abuses in Abu Ghraib prison occurred in October.

In a statement, McCotter said he had nothing to do with training military personnel to run the prisons.

But Schumer wants to know how someone with McCotter's "checkered record" was appointed to the team Ashcroft dispatched to Iraq to help rebuild its judicial system.

"There are many questions begging for answers," Schumer said last week. "Mr. McCotter 's selection also raises serious questions about the role that was played by civilian advisers in setting prison policies, designing training programs for prison guards and directly influencing the environment in which the horrible abuses at Abu Ghraib took place."

McCotter had done a double tour of duty in Vietnam and had been running military prisons for about 10 years when he resigned as commandant of the Army's disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., in 1984. He moved into civilian life to become assistant director of the Texas Department of Corrections, later renamed the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Less than a year later, McCotter was picked to head the Texas prison system in June 1985 after intense lobbying by Gov. Mark White. Managing the TDC in those days meant complying with the strict guidelines established by U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice to meet the terms of a settlement in a long-standing prison overcrowding lawsuit.

McCotter spent 18 months administering the Texas system, a period when prison violence made frequent headlines and Justice was threatening to fine the state as much as $1,000 a day if it did not make court-ordered improvements in the system.

The Legislature had required automatic release of prisoners when prison capacity neared the court-ordered limit of 95 percent. But McCotter was widely criticized for allowing early release of thousands of violent convicts who accrued "good time" in segregation cells where they were placed because they were too dangerous to mix with others.

A special report of the Legislative Budget Board in December 1986 said that during the previous year at least 665 inmates received credit for good behavior while serving time in "solitary confinement" for misbehavior.

McCotter resigned that same month under pressure from newly elected Gov. Bill Clements. His supporters claimed McCotter had been unfairly made a scapegoat during the bitter political campaign, noting that prison violence dropped significantly during his tenure.

McCotter took a job as secretary of the New Mexico Department of Corrections in the late 1980s and later served as director of the Utah Department of Corrections.

But McCotter resigned from the Utah job in 1997, again under pressure, when inmate Michael Valent, a 29-year-old schizophrenic, died after being strapped naked to a chair for 16 hours.

"At the time, prison officials attempted to blame Mr. Valent's death on head trauma supposedly caused by the inmate repeatedly bashing his head against a wall in a suicidal episode," Schumer said in a statement released by his office. Autopsies revealed that Valent died after blood clots formed in his legs during his confinement.

"The treatment of Mr. Valent was described by a number of critics as `torture,' " Schumer said. "Nonetheless, Mr. McCotter defended what was done to Mr. Valent and other prisoners, saying, `You have to have a way to deal with violent inmates.' "

McCotter took the job with Management & Training Corp., headquartered in Centerville, Utah, after leaving that state's prison system post. But he was not involved in the day-to-day operation of the Santa Fe County jail (a Management & Training Corp. client) when its practices came under scrutiny by the Department of Justice.

"Why Attorney General Ashcroft would send someone with such a checkered record to rebuild Iraq's corrections system is beyond me," Schumer said.

McCotter told online magazine Corrections.com in January that his team was commissioned by the Justice Department to do a three-month assessment of the entire Iraq criminal justice system. But he arrived in Iraq just as presidential envoy Paul Bremer took over as civil administrator, McCotter said, and Bremer told the team he expected it to prepare the prisons for opening as well.

In a statement issued through his company, McCotter said, "I am proud of what I and my team accomplished while in the Middle East." His team spent part of its time training Iraqi citizens to work in the prison, he said, but at no time did they train or supervise any military personnel working in Iraqi prisons.

"Like all Americans, I am offended and sickened by the improper actions that have taken place at Abu Ghraib since my departure," McCotter said. "Certainly those who have acted improperly should be fully prosecuted."

Curtis Price Jr., Management & Training Corp.'s vice president for government and community relations, said late Friday that McCotter was aware of Schumer's inquiry into his selection for the Iraq job but had nothing to add beyond his previously released statement.

"It could possibly become an investigation," Price said. "He'd really rather not comment on it at the moment."